Quiz-Unit 7 Poems - Quiz Unit 7 America This piece is a...

Quiz – Unit 7 America This piece is a standard sonnet using the traditional English rhyming scheme. A sonnet has 14 lines, ten syllables per line and set in a rhyme scheme (page 504). The message that Claude McKay is trying to portray in this piece is that even though America is a free country, it also has many injustices and forms of discrimination. Throughout the poem, Claude wavers back and forth between his intense positive and negative feelings of both America and the American societal norms of the period. The emotions relayed in the poem are intended to take the reader down the same emotional path that Claude was feeling when he wrote this. He achieves this through his rhythm scheme, alliteration and metaphors. The poem starts with, “Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess, I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.” This reveals to the reader that although racism is painful to Claude, he

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